The invention relates to the dosingly filling of fluent or pasty filling material into containers. The invention provides a suitable arrangement for carrying out this method. This arrangement includes an inlet conduit and outlet conduit for the filling material and a cleaning fluid. The arrangement includes a housing in which a control element is rotatably mounted which element is adapted to alternatively release and seal the inlet (feed) and outlet (dispense) conduits for the filling material and further include a reciprocating piston rod for a dosing piston which is coaxially arranged with respect to the rotational axis of the control element.
There has become known in practice an arrangement for dosingly filling fluent filling material. Such arrangement includes a dosing piston movably mounted in a cylinder forming the control element. By virtue of the guiding of the dosing piston in such cylinder, the latter may be relatively long and must have a large diameter, in order to accommodate the piston stroke of the dosing piston. Such known arrangement is not only quite complex and expensive to manufacture, but also presents operational difficulties such as adapting the cylinder into the housing and the necessary peripheral sealing of such cylinder. Since the rotational cylinder is preferably arranged in a prone position, such configuration presents a further considerable operational problem as it makes the cleaning of the arrangement more difficult. Heretofore this operational problem was overcome in that the movable mounted piston rod was disconnected from its drive and thereafter the dosing piston was fully retracted from the rotational cylinder. Disregarding for the moment that frequently the rotational cylinder cannot be manually moved but requires a special auxiliary tool for effecting such movement, it is furthermore necessary that the free end face of the rotational cylinder must be sealed by means of a flap which is pivotally mounted on the housing. Thereafter there is eventually introduced a cleaning fluid via the inlet and outlet conduits by way of axially adjusting the entire rotational cylinder. The afore-described cleaning process has been found inadequate because a good rinsing of all parts is not possible. This is so because, first of all, a so-called "CIP-cleaning" (cleaning in place), which means a circular peripheral rinsing is not possible due to the convoluted configuration of some of the parts forming the arrangement. Therefore, the cleaning operation is not only quite complex and burdensome, but can lead, under certain circumstances, to damage of the built-in and dismountable parts, in particular the seals of the arrangement. Finally, it is necessary for changing the format of the arrangement to exchange not only the dosing piston but also the rotational cylinder.